


Divergent Stories

by Silex



Category: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Implied Relationships, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Canon, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 20:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16940571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Farah has been haunted by dreams for as long as she can remember, the sense that there's something more. She can see it in the way the Vizier looks at her, the way he listens when she explains. The dreams though, the stories, they've changed in her memory, slipping away into something new.





	Divergent Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disgruntled_owl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disgruntled_owl/gifts).



> Thank you for giving me the chance to write in this fandom. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long while now.

If someone else were telling the story there would have been a reason for it, some clear sign from the start. From her childhood there would have been something that set her apart from all her sisters, such as her being her father’s favorite, or that she was exceptionally strong, smart, or brave. Something to hint at what was to come so that it would all make sense.

That wasn’t how it happened.

Farah was one of the youngest of too many daughters and her brothers never had time to play with her when she was little, though there had been times when she tried to tag along, fascinated by what they were doing.

Even as a child she had been contrary, refusing to have the same interests as her sisters, but that was hardly uncommon.

It was after watching them that she picked up a bow and arrows for the first time and found that, no matter how she tried, she couldn’t manage.

Her brothers’ instructor caught her in the act and laughed and told her to go back and play with her sisters, to learn to be a proper young girl so that she could grow up to be a proper young woman and someday be a proper wife.

If not for his derision she would have given up. Instead she kept at it because she was a princess after all and as long as she did what was expected of her, harmless diversions were harmless.

In time she had some success, though never as much as she would have liked.

In time, when she got older, when the Vizier grew sicker, an urgency took hold and she improved as though the two were connected. In her mind somehow they were, though the reason never became clear to her.

A half remembered story from the _Panchatantra_.

The face of someone met once in childhood and then re-met as an adult, changed by memory and time.

A puzzle of countless pieces, hidden away behind a locked door.

A door she could never find, no matter how she searched.

_Kākolūkīyam but the voice not her mother’s, the accent foreign,_

A room hidden away behind a door that she had never seen before in a place she had never been but visited again and again in dreams.

When she was young she once went to the Vizier to ask him about the meaning of a dream she’d had, because he was a wise man, standing proudly behind her father.

She couldn’t remember the dream now, but she could remember that he knelt down to listen to her.

Her father tried to shoo her away, tell her that the Vizier was a busy, important man and had better things to do than to listen to the ramblings of a child.

Being told that only made her want to talk to him more.

Because he _listened_.

When she was scolded for talking to him as though they were equals, as though she was an adult and not a little girl, he held up a hand and told her to continue.

He listened to her stories and agreed that anything was possible.

Even then he’d been smitten with her, but she was too young to know.

When he wasn’t busy he would tell her stories, different than the ones her mother did, teach her things.

Possibly the same things he taught when helping instruct her brothers in their learning.

Every childish thing she said he treated as a gravely serious matter. He told her stories, ones not of the sort a young girl was expected to hear.

The stories he told weren’t of fanciful animals and magical places, they were of battles and war and politics, the matters of men and the world.

So many kingdoms, a whole world that her father and brothers would need to contend with while she and her sisters and mother stayed safe in the palace.

It may have given her a different sense of her place in things, but she had been so young that it may have simply been how every little girl thinks her place in the world is special.

After listening to the Vizier the neatly manicured gardens, everything properly trimmed, with smooth pebbled paths and white stone fountains became wild jungles where imaginary battles were fought. The sound of a scampering rat became a man eating tiger, hiding in the tall grass, stalking her. The flock of doves, a wake of vultures waiting to carry her off.

And she told the Vizier these stories and he _listened_.

And he gave her a gift.

The necklace.

The moment she put the thin chain over her head she clung to the pendant as though her life depended on it.

_it did_

From the same place as his staff, he said.

Then he told her his story.

_Kākolūkīyam_

_the door opened for the first time a fleeting glimpse_

When he was younger and her father was not yet the Maharajah, they had adventured together.

Back then they had been young and strong and convinced of their own _immortality_ as all young men were.

He had read ancient texts, studied forgotten maps, her father gotten a ship, gathered a crew and they had set off to sail into legend.

There was an island, not on any chart, but spoken of in texts older than any kingdom, written by a vanished people, where there was

_an empty palace, a hollow hourglass, dashed hopes and certain death he said in every telling, but not in her memory of the first time he told the story_

an Empress with dominion over time.

The island itself was surrounded by a perpetual storm, trapped there by the magic of the Empress.

Crashing waves and rocks that would dash any ship to bits.

The captain had been afraid, but dared not argue with him or her father. How the Vizier smiled when he said that – even then wanting more power than was his.

Afraid of the storm, afraid of disobeying orders, the captain pressed onwards and managed to steer the ship to safety.

When they arrived they found

_monsters, swarms of them, desiccated things clad in rags that crumbled to dust when struck down, only to rise again_

A crumbling ruin of a palace that must have been grander than any currently standing, or would have been if not for the state it was in.

The walls were covered in half obliterated carvings, telling the story of the place.

_a story within a story within a story within a memory of a story_

The Empress had been there, had seen her own death and defied it.

_Who carved the story?_ Farah had asked and the Vizier had shrugged, relishing the mystery.

The Empress had nimbly dodged her death, stepped outside of time to walk past it.

_Where did she go?_ she wanted to know.

It was a mystery that the Vizier hoped to solve because of what the Empress had left behind.

An empty hourglass.

_a closed door with no key_

A mysterious dagger.

_a lock with no door_

A staff.

The Vizier held up the one that he carried

A necklace.

He looked down at her and Farah knew the story was true.

And a mystery that itched in the back of both their minds.

What was the hourglass supposed to be for, the dagger with its strange magic, the staff, the necklace?

The Vizier took her to the palace vaults, even though she wasn’t supposed to go there, and showed her the hourglass.

It terrified her.

Because he wasn’t supposed to have shown it to her and because the first time he had told the story it hadn’t been empty when he and her father had found it and the dagger had been glowing a radiance that made her vision blur, memories that weren’t her own dancing before her eyes.

The first time she saw the hourglass it had been filled with the dying Empress’ curse upon the world, locked away by the dagger that had struck her dead, her immortality waiting to be unleashed to blight humanity with life unending.

Her father had locked it away because it was too dangerous.

_He was afraid of the power that could have been his_ the Vizier had said _Turned his back on trying to find the dagger and the chance to be more than fate had written for him._

After the Vizier showed her the hourglass he talked about his plans for it, to find where the Empress had sailed off to on the raging sea that was time.

_someone else had said similar – the same voice that from her dreams_

And wasn’t she curious as to where the Empress had gone to?

She was, because the Empress was like her in some way, not content to be locked away to wait for a fate that someone else had decided for her.

Farah imagined what she would do if she met the Empress, what she would ask.

As she grew older the dreams grew stronger.

Once she asked the Vizier to tell her the story as he had the first time, just to reassure herself that the details were true, about the island being full of monsters, and the hourglass full of magic.

Because she knew that he had, just as she knew the voice in her dreams.

_Why don’t you tell me?_ He smiled a serpent’s smile, the light of hunger glowing in his eyes.

A new and different hunger that she failed to see.

She told him and he listened, nodding at all the right places, asking all the right questions, an inversion of the first telling of the story, their roles switched.

_It’s the magic of the treasures_ he told her _The dagger speaks to me, it calls out._

Late at night she would sneak through the palace, down to the vault and talk to the guards to reassure herself that the hourglass was still there, still empty. That the dagger was still there, not stolen away by some mysterious figure.

Or the Vizier.

_because one day she might go there and find a golden glow, burningly bright spilling out from behind the closed door_

The hourglass was empty each time, not carried away, full of light and the Empress’ curse, while the palace burned so that she could be brought in chains to a strange place and watch helplessly as an arrogant young man, the sight of him tearing at her heart, took _the dagger_ and

That was where her dream ended, with her waking up as the light washed over everything.

It was just a dream, her mother, father, the guards, the Vizier reassured her.

Except he would ask for details.

Because he believed her when she said that there had been a time, not in a dream, when he had shown her the hourglass full of light and doom.

More and more details each time, his eyes lighting up like the hourglass in the dreams when she spoke of its glow.

Where was the palace?

Did the place or the man have a name?

She didn’t know, but she knew what he sounded like

_Kākolūkīyam_

even though he never spoke in her dream.

She described his face, his accent, the clothing he wore

_finery increasingly ragged as they fled from the monsters of the Vizier’s story of the island_

the color of his eyes and skin.

_the feel of his touch from a dream within the dream_

Each detail increasingly vivid as the dream grew while remaining the same.

There would be times when she saw flashes of it, the foreign palace, the monsters, the Vizier attacking her in her own room, so strongly that they could have been memories.

The dreams faded though, as she grew older.

_older than she was in the dreams_

Something was falling away, slipping through her fingers like sand through a sieve.

A fork in a road, not noticed until looking back.

She was losing something that she had never held in the first place.

The face of the man faded until all she had left was his voice.

A single word.

_Kākolūkīyam_

A story, but not one from _Panchatantra_.

Not from any book written yet.

An aching, yearning mystery.

Her determination to master archery remained, growing stronger, even as the reasoning behind it faded.

It had once been a childish fancy, but now there was fear.

There would be a time when her life would be in danger.

The attack that had never happened, never would.

More than her life, and she had to be ready.

Her father and mother and siblings laughed at her for it, thinking it some youthful folly, the continuation of her childhood games.

The hysteria of a girl on the cusp of womanhood.

And maybe it was, but there were times when she wondered.

Times when she tried to remember the face and voice of a stranger so that when they met for the first time she would recognize him.

There were new expectations of her as a woman.

Expectations she shied away from.

_Babylon!_ the Vizier had laughed to her one day when she went to him, not for stories, but for advice. The Maharajah wanted to marry her off and she didn’t know what to do _That’s the answer! The man is King Sharaman’s missing son!_

She had no clue what the Vizier was talking about, even after he explained.

_it was a warning in hindsight_

Sitting her down, he told her a story a new old story that she read too much into. The Empress of Time had sailed off, out of time, but she hadn’t done so alone. There had been a man and that man had taken her to a place. It all lined up.

The Babylonian King’s son vanished so strangely after going mad, talking about demons and monsters and fleeing from shadows, somehow pressed a captain into taking him on a voyage away from his nightmares.

There was a parallel that Farah saw, to the trip her father and the Vizier had made.

To the stories she had made as a child so maybe the story was about her?

Was she to run off to Babylon to meet the Prince there? Throw herself into the arms of a madman to escape the marriage that she wasn’t ready for.

To prevent the war with Persia that had tormented her barely remembered dreams.

_looking back she would laugh at that_

The Babylonian Prince was missing, presumed for dead because of how many years it had been, but he wasn’t.

Just like the Empress, he had stepped out of time and now he was coming back.

The Vizier looked at her, a hungry, sickly old man, except he was no longer looking at her, but the medallion. His eyes had wandered as his health declined, something that she didn’t notice until after it happened.

Once he had been interested in her.

Now her stories were all that mattered.

_Do you feel it?_ his wandering eyes asked, _Do you still hear it?_

She did, a pull, an ache, a longing

_to set things right_

that she couldn’t understand.

The medallion was a compass that didn’t point north, but a gift given couldn’t be taken back.

The hourglass waited

_held potential_

the dagger was a key

_which filled her with fear despite not knowing what it would unleash_

the medallion guided

_the pull of dreams and possibility_

and the staff

_controlled, but she didn’t know that yet_

The story was over, the final chapter of her childhood closed. Innocence lost.

_There were ways_ , the Vizier had reassured her. A vague reassurance.

Ways out of her marriage?

Ways to escape the looming danger she felt?

Ways to make sense of what she knew?

A week later the Maharajah was dead.

_Assassins!_ the Vizier proclaimed, mortified, while his eyes laughed and laughed.

Oh how he laughed silently.

Each time he coughed it stabbed her

_like a dagger to the heart_

because she knew it was him, told everyone who would listen as much.

And was dismissed as being hysterical over her father’s death and her own betrothal.

She would have done anything to show the truth, to stop the marriage.

_just not that, not what the Vizier’s smile threatened to offer_

Like jackals smelling blood, sensing weakness, the Scythians gathered, waiting.

An army the likes of which had never been seen, members of dozens of different tribes in all their barbaric splendor, she overheard in conversation.

They were held at bay by the army, her oldest brother boasting that it seemed fitting that his first act Maharajah would be to drive off an invading army.

Except he wasn’t quite Maharajah yet, the ceremony had yet to be conducted and there was so much to worry about.

So much that no one noticed the Vizier slip away.

Out of sight out of mind.

Two days later the city was burning like in the dreams she suddenly remembered.

How had she forgotten them?

Somehow the Scythians had bypassed every defense, made it to the palace before any cry of alarm could go out and had killed her brothers.

A half-truth, the Scythians had slit the throats of her brothers, as they lay asleep from drugged wine.

She knew this, even before the Vizier came up to her, his Scythian generals standing behind him.

Awake and restless she had heard the intruders, fled through secret ways she had traveled as a child so that she could try and fail to rouse her brothers.

She watched as they were killed, tried to intervene and was captured.

She expected to be killed or worse, but she was merely captured and brought before the Vizier.

His eyes locked on her as he made his promise.

That when he found the Empress and took her power for himself he would reverse his own mortality and do the same for her

_because all those years ago she had asked him about a dream_

for every conquering king needed a queen and she was the only one worthy of him.

All those years ago, the man who had been teaching her archery had been right, that it was useless for her to learn.

When she most needed a weapon she was without one.

Which wasn’t to say she was powerless to resist.

Even an unarmed woman could kill a consumptive old man, bring justice to a murderer and traitor.

Except it wasn’t just the Vizier.

Laughing, his generals stepped between her, kicked her to the ground and would have kept doing so if not for the Vizier stopping them.

He laughed at her, laughed so hard that he started coughing and she watched as his face grew pale, willing him to die.

If her desperation had been a bow, her rage an arrow, surely she could have pierced the Vizier’s heart.

Then he would die.

He didn’t.

Instead he ordered her locked in her room while he consolidated his power over the kingdom and prepared to set out on the next part of his plan, the conquest of Babylon.

His generals cheered.

She seethed.

_Kākolūkīyam_

No rescue would come for her.

No door would open, either in her room or in her dreams.

The window though, that was unguarded.

Used to sneaking she managed to escape her room, nearly make it out of the palace to

_run to a place she had never been, didn’t know how to get to, to warn a mad Prince that still hadn’t returned that he and his city were in grave danger_

freedom.

The Scythian guards were more attentive than those of her father, less amused by a wandering princess.

She was hauled roughly away, not back to her room, but to the dungeon and locked away like a common prisoner.

They’d laughed and jeered at her in their harsh, foreign tongue and she’d seen them, for a moment, as the monsters of the stories that she could once again remember.

_a different palace, a different city_

She waited, languishing, while the Vizier made his plans.

Plans he came down to discuss with her, as though she could be won over by talk of immortality and power.

If she had power she’d strike him down with it, but she was helpless, powerless in a way that she had never imagined.

Even when she was to be married she hadn’t felt this dread, this panic, because she had at least been able to pretend that there was a choice, a way out.

Each night she prayed for the Vizier to die and each morning she was disappointed to find her prayers unanswered.

So she instead wished for the chance to

_kill him herself_

escape.

It was a hope that she clung to when the door to her cell was opened.

Catching the Scythian guards by surprise she managed to flee down the hall until a closed door stopped her.

She was bound and caged.

For transport to Babylon so that she could witness his ascension firsthand, the Vizier promised, as though that would impress her, win her over.

_All because she’d listened to him all those years ago._

Confined like an animal, she waited and hoped, working at her bindings on the long journey to Babylon, her efforts gradually paying off as the ropes loosened.

_Soon_ , she promised herself, _revenge_.

And an answer to dreams yet untold.

_Kākolūkīyam_


End file.
